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Getting Stoned

WITH FABIEN THE DEALER

Color as a Cult
Fabien travels the world buying stones, building stock to sell to jewelers. If pressed, he has a small, well-chosen collection of white diamonds—but colored rocks are his riches. His obsession. And his renown amongst Parisian jewelry designers looking for a particular type of chromatic high.
He’s got garnets, emeralds, spinels. He’s got vibrational rose quartz cabochons, sizzling fire opals and, of course, tourmalines—“we’re very tourmaline here,” says Fabien.

As far as clients, the likes of JAR (Joel Arthur Rosenthal) and Victoire de Castellane have been known to call on him for a mineral hue or two. As far as secrets, he has a black stone that nearly electrifies with color, glows in the dark, in UV light. Those who are into color, are really into color. It’s not a world of flat feelings.

“Color makes people uninhibited,” explains Fabien, referring to the incredible market shift in the past few years towards colored stones. Jewelry junkies want expression, energy, the no-limit dare of color, with likes of designers Marie-Hélène de Taillac or Lydia Courteille out to satisfy.

“We see color first, before size. A stone could have zero inclusions, yet no color. But when the color is there, really there, you can almost see the vibrance from outside the room.”

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Far Past the “Precious Four”

For decades, there was the indomitable quartet of precious stones—diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds—with all other stones in a jeweler’s repertoire categorized as semi-precious. The classification was based largely on relative value and, today, is considered meaningless, as the International Gem Society is eager to defend, and the World Jewelry Federation (CIBJO) helped officially clarify. All are gems.

Exclusivity of origin, a crystalline quality, size, brilliance, and that inimitable color radiance—all these aspects go into “preciousness”, no matter the stone.
Diamonds, too, are now appreciated when yellow, brown—cleverly described, rather, as “chocolate”—blue and pink, while certain stones such as Alexandrite, Jadeite and the hotshot Paraíba tourmaline, are in many cases more valuable per carat than diamonds. Colored stones are a big open world now, no longer relegated to a setting’s decorative side stones or “fantasy” jewelry. Understated bourgeois tastes are on a total color high.
A collection of Padparadscha Sapphires
A polychrome tourmaline and an assortment of spinels, sapphires, tourmalines and garnets
Paraíba Tourmaline, the Blue Champagne of Stone Dealing

“JAR was a precursor in the 1990s regarding Paraíba Tourmaline,” describes Fabien. JAR had recognized the unique quality of the Paraíba Tourmaline, a stone appearing in multi-color creations already well-travelled at auction. For example, this beauty at Christie’s.

A tourmaline claims the Paraíba Tourmaline title only if it comes from the mines in Paraíba, Brazil, just as Champagne can only be called such if the sparkling wine is from the earth of Champagne, France. Ever since the discovery of the copper-rich mine in Paraíba in the 1980s, and the stone’s entry into the buying market in the 1990s, the Paraíba Tourmaline has steadily risen in price ever since, due to its incredible hue and restricted origin.

For, while tourmalines of competing quality are sourced in Nigeria and Mozambique, there is a unique visual savor to the Caribbean-water electric, brightly saturated, almost neon shade of blue coming from the earth of Brazil. Like Champagne, origin is earth, a mineralogical profile in place that is, literally, irreplaceable.

Polychrome tourmaline
On JAR
The American, Paris-based designer JAR, according to Fabien, has a particular—if not exceptional—eye for color.
While his skill is regularly celebrated by clients, collectors, auction specialists, curators and journalists, it is a quality JAR himself would never vaunt, at least publicly; he flees the press and all aspects of self-promotion. This color competence is explored, rather, in a unique space with stone dealers such as Fabien. A show-and-tell, a meeting of new material, a conversation, those several moments suspended to observe, to shift the light as it enters cut angles, to go where color leads.
Procuring any information about JAR is to either look at his work or talk to those who know him. “JAR captures the sublime in jewelry. Let’s leave it at that,” finishes Fabien. “I have infinite admiration for him. In fact, I think that’s the only thing he’d authorize me to say about him anyway.”

“I adore wearing gems, but not because they are mine. You can’t possess radiance, you can only admire it.”

Elizabeth Taylor

“Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”

Warren Buffet

Everyday Stone Dealing
Except for their stones, dealers prefer to keep things unclear. Their exact address, who they deal with, how many truly exceptional rocks they are holding back.
“You can spend years crafting a collection of impeccable shades of pink tourmalines and a client comes in and buys the whole box in minutes.” Dealers are, in many ways, collectors who mustn’t get too attached to their darlings, and accept to sell anything when the time is right.

Fabien’s regular pilgrimage to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show in Arizona is part of his sourcing. “There something magical about billions of stones in one place.” Or India, where there is the art of the deal: “Sometimes they play you, ten days of showing you shit, then just as you’re about to get onto the plane to go home, they pull out something interesting. Ten days and then the beautiful stones start to come out. It’s a seduction game.”

As a third-generation stone dealer in Paris, working in tandem with his wife, just as his grandparents once did, he knows the rules as well as he knows himself.
“Confidence takes years to earn, and can be lost in a second,” explains Fabien, referring notably to assuring his stones come from earth, not labs or the newest treatments.
It’s a job that hasn’t changed much in the past hundred years. A conversation, a handshake. A mix of beauty and business. And, depending on who you’re dealing with, sometimes one hell of a color trip.